“Here?” Neila asked, reaching forward hesitantly to lay her thin, pale hand against the stone of the construct’s humanoid paw.
“As good as anywhere else,” Salim said. “Lahan may be particular about how you come in, but he’s not picky about how you leave, provided it’s not without paying. Speaking of which—” Salim turned his head toward the bar, where the bartender was putting all the actors of Lamasara’s theater district to shame with his staunch refusal to acknowledge what was going on in the corner.
“Put it on our tab,” Salim called.
That got the barkeep’s attention.
“Hey, you can’t—”
But then the colors of the stone flashed, and they were falling.
Neila stumbled as they arrived once more in the Boneyard. Though she didn’t fall, she remained doubled over, holding her stomach. “Gods, how do you stand it?”
“Be thankful,” Salim said, though in truth he didn’t feel so great himself. “We’ve been lucky so far. Using the amulet is an art, not a science. We’re fortunate to get here at all.”
Neila made a gagging sound that could have been commentary, or something more immediate. Salim politely directed his attention elsewhere.
Ignoring them both, Calabast was already moving toward the River of Souls with his big, gear-driven strides. Salim’s aim had been true—damn near miraculous, actually—and they’d come out just a few hundred feet from the disturbed area they’d discovered on their last visit. Picking his way carefully through the detritus and swirls of disrupted dust and stone, the guardian of Axis studied the ground. He stopped over the objects Salim and Neila had discovered—and which, Salim now noticed, were no longer in the neat row they’d been laid in less than two hours before—then reached down and picked up the fishing globe, turning it over in his massive hands with surprising delicacy. Salim had time for maybe two more breaths, and then Calabast spoke.
“We need to return. To Axis.”
“What?!” Neila had straightened, but still had the wild-eyed look of somebody who’d just shot the rapids without a canoe, and was now being told it was time to hop back in the river.
Salim was unsurprised. He’d seen Calabast at work before. While some might see the automaton’s brute size and crackling fists and presume that fighting was all he was good for, Salim knew otherwise. Tracking down those necromancers and other powerful individuals who’d spent centuries or millennia thumbing their noses at Death herself took brains even more than brawn, and underneath that helmet Calabast was sharper and quicker to make connections than Salim—with his head full of gray curds and juice—could ever hope to be.
“It was a protean.” Calabast’s voice was as flat as ever, with no trace of irritation at being questioned. “The warpwave scars and the objects prove it. Now that it has completed its task, the odds of the protean remaining on the same plane rather than retreating to the safety of the Maelstrom are low, even given the proteans’ illogic. My ability to track it is insufficient to cross planar borders. Therefore, we require assistance.”
Salim nodded. “And you have someone in mind?”
“My superiors.”
That made sense. If anyone would know how to track a single protean through the chaos of the Maelstrom, it would be the servitors of the Axiomite Godmind. Salim walked over to Calabast and put his hand on the construct’s arm.
“That’s it?” Neila’s voice was exasperated. “Two minutes here, and you’re all ready to go back?”
Salim shrugged and lifted the amulet on its thong. “Calabast needed to see it for himself. Now he has, and there’s no reason to stay. Unless you’d like to wait for us here while we go find the protean who stole your father? It’s highly unlikely that anyone else will decide to violate the Court of Axis while we’re away, so I’m sure you’ll be fine by yourself until we return.”
Cursing, Neila leaped forward and put her hand on Salim’s. The world turned—
—and found them standing at the crystalline foot of the Threefold Pillar. Neila’s head tilted back as she followed the line of the building up, up, up, and she would have overbalanced and fallen from the sudden vertigo if Salim hadn’t grabbed her hand to steady her.
Up close, the pillars were even more magnificent than they had been from the humans’ vantage on the fountain. The golden symbols that had gleamed and twisted their way up the three pillars so prettily from a distance were now bright brands that flared like the sun itself, forcing Salim and Neila to squint their eyes or be blinded. This near the source, the symbols didn’t flow smoothly like gleaming water or motes in the eye. Instead, they rocketed up from the ground in a rush, burning brands thirty feet across that shot up the face of each spire with a puff of air and the soft whump of a torch being ignited.
Neila’s smile was back, her twisting stomach forgotten for the time being.
“Amazing,” she whispered. Her hand squeezed his, and before Salim was aware it was happening he had squeezed back, her delicate fingers smooth against his callused ones. Then the absurdity of the action struck him, and he immediately let her hand drop and turned to Calabast.
“And you think the servants of the Godmind will help us?”
Calabast’s reply was suitable for a monk—or a hard-assed magistrate. Both of which, Salim knew, were fairly accurate descriptors for the metal giant.
“Those that break one law break them all,” Calabast rumbled. “My superiors will undoubtedly assist us. But the Lady of Graves is still not one of us, and balance must be maintained. There may be a price, farther down the continuum.”
Salim nodded. “Of course.” He might be sworn to serve the goddess, but be damned if he was going to haggle on her behalf. Let his team deal with finding Neila’s father. Ceyanan could foot the bill.
“You will not be allowed to accompany me. You lack sufficient authorization, and your capacity for processing would only slow us. Inside the Pillar and the Crucible, we have methods of communication that render speech ineffectual.”
Salim expected some sort of objection from the girl, but Neila merely nodded.
“I will return,” Calabast said. Then he turned and stomped a little ways from them along the pillar’s face. From nowhere, a dark, squared-off portal appeared in the crystalline wall. Calabast entered, and then the pillar’s surface was smooth and unblemished once more.
“He doesn’t waste any time, does he?” Neila seemed to stand easier now that it was just the two of them again.
“I’m not sure he’s capable of it,” Salim replied.
Together they put their backs to the brilliant pillar and stared out over the city. Though the monolithic hump of the Adamantine Crucible—and indeed most of the cityscape they’d observed—had receded into obscurity, the gnarled and rocky line of Pharasma’s Spire still stretched up in a thick line from just beyond the city’s edge, soaring away into the silver blankness of the sky. They stared up at it, tracing its length as far as their eyes would dare.
“Hard to believe we were on top of that just a moment ago,” Neila said.
“Yes.” Salim knew that the apparent height was an illusion, and that the actual Boneyard was no nearer or farther than any of the other Outer Planes. Rather, its apparent closeness was symbolic, the human mind and the multiverse working together to try to put things into an understandable framework. But he remained quiet.
“It makes you feel like an ant.” She paused, clearly thinking of the hive people in the bar. “Or something small, anyway.”
Salim nodded. “That’s one thing you learn traveling the planes. No matter how important you think you are, you’re still just an insect among giants.”
Or a pawn, he thought. Salim supposed that to many people, being a game piece sounded better than living and dying in obscurity, without ever being acknowledged by the powers that be. Salim knew better.
There was a soft whir behind them, and then a familiar thumping gait. They turned to find Calabast standing at rest, stone arms at his sides.
“The servants of the Godmind have identified the protean.”
“Divinations?” Neila asked, and her voice held none of the awe it might have a week before.
“Divination is simply deduction by a more powerful mind,” Calabast said. “In the end, Law always overcomes Chaos, and even the proteans have patterns.” He held up the glass fishing float, which Salim hadn’t noticed him take from the Boneyard. “This fits the model made for the protean named Sarusek—an imentesh.”
Salim let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. Imenteshes were the emissaries and ambassadors—such as they were—of the protean race. It made sense that one of them would be responsible, as they were the only ones who had dealings with other races outside the twisting, unsettled landscape of the Maelstrom. Faced alone, a single imentesh was still more than a match for him and Neila, but Salim had seen Calabast in action more than once, and he suspected that the machine warrior would have little problem defending them. Were it a keketar, now—one of the proteans’ priest class could have reshaped them all to suit its incomprehensible aesthetics before they’d so much as spoken its name.
Salim decided not to think about that. They’d just have to hope the creature wasn’t reporting or making its confessions—or whatever it was they did—when the group caught up to it. “Were they able to track him?”
Calabast’s nod was accompanied by the quiet squeal of metal on stone. Somebody needed to oil his helmet. “He’s in the Maelstrom.”
It was no more than Salim had expected, but he still didn’t like the idea of confronting the creature on its home turf.
“What should we expect?” That was Neila. She was looking at Salim, and some of his concern must have shown on his face.
“Everything. Nothing. That’s the problem with it.” Salim ran a hand through his hair. “The Maelstrom is chaos, plain and simple—the sea in which all the other planes float. Near the edges, it’s not so bad, but if our kidnapper’s in the depths ...”
“The terrain is unknowable,” Calabast agreed. “And rarely static. I have knowledge of the protean’s present location, but not the region’s present nature.”
“Coordinates without a chart.” Salim had spent some time around deep-water sailors off Rahadoum’s western coast, on the Arcadian Ocean. Such men frequently knew where they were, thanks to the stars and their careful reckoning, but that didn’t always mean they knew what they’d find just over the horizon.
“My information is already degrading,” Calabast said. “Entropy does not wait. Soon our quarry will move, or the Void itself will twist and render our information obsolete.”
“Then let’s not waste time.” Salim reached for the amulet around his neck, but Calabast raised a stone finger in negation.
“I cannot transmit my knowledge in an acceptable format,” he said. “I will transport us there, but we will need your device to return.” Gauntleted fists that crackled with flickering blue energy were held out, fingers splayed toward the humans. They hung there, outstretched and steady. Salim looked at them apprehensively.
“You will not be harmed, Salim son of Anand.”
“Of course,” Salim said, but the words were calmer than he felt.
To Salim’s surprise, it was Neila who stepped forward first and took one of the construct’s hands, grasping two of the massive fingers. As she did so, the lightning spread up her own arm almost as far as her shoulder. She looked at it in wonder, watching the sparks play over the pale skin without leaving a trace.
“Come, priest-hunter.”
Salim looked up sharply at that. He glared at Calabast, then glanced quickly sideways at Neila, who was still enraptured by the blue light. From a human, the words might have been a simple slip of the tongue. But nothing Calabast’s sort said or did was ever unintentional.
Baited by a damned machine, Salim thought.
Then he stepped forward and embraced the lightning.
Chapter Eleven
Riddles and Chaos
Taking Calabast’s hand was like plunging his own into boiling water, but without the heat. Twisted and branching lines of electricity surrounded Salim’s arm, as they had Neila’s, and then they were suddenly climbing farther, enveloping all three of them in a glow like swampfire. Salim had a quick glimpse of Neila, eyes closed and back arched, and then he was closing his own as the tingling climbed up his neck and over his face.
There was a soundless explosion that seemed to come at once from inside his head and outside of it. There was no noise—not in a physical sense—but rather the weight of the sound pressing on his skin and reverberating in his bones. There was a sudden, terrifying instant where he thought he might be deaf—the silence of the unheard thunderclap made him think of soldiers too close to an alchemist’s grenade, deafened by the concussion before the sound could even reach their brains. Then the wall of pressure lifted and eased, and he began to hear new noises, the bustle of Axis replaced by unfamiliar hoots and birdsong. He opened his eyes.
They were standing at the edge of a forest, its leaves brilliant red and yellow. Under their feet, the loam of the trees’ moldering foliage gave way to the gray stone of an outcropping that thrust suddenly and steeply up from the woods below. Though they were only a short distance up the promontory, it was enough for them to look out over the treetops and see the long, sinuous line of the forest’s edge, where it terminated sharply in a line of golden field, which in turn became a jagged cliff face and the rolling waves of a green sea. Bird-shaped things, some much larger than any avians Salim was used to, darted up from the forest canopy, screeching their wordless mating songs and battle cries as they chased each other through the open air and then dove back into the shelter of the trees.
At the top of the rock on which they stood—and which Salim could now see was a rise in the cliff face itself, sheer-walled and overhanging on its opposite side—stood a tower. It was perfectly cylindrical, and thick enough that despite its height it seemed to squat rather than soar. Time had taken its toll, and overshadowing the few narrow windows were yawning gaps in the stone where mortar had crumbled, sending man-sized blocks tumbling down. By far the worst damage had been to the crenelated crown, where fully half of the upper works had broken off in a jagged line, leaving the tower’s top ragged and lopsided.
“This is the Maelstrom?” Neila asked. The colored forest and darting birds apparently didn’t match her concept of perfect chaos.
“At the moment,” Salim said. “But that doesn’t hold a lot of bearing on what it’ll be next. That’s the problem.” He looked to Calabast. “Which way?”
In response, the automaton turned and began stomping up the rise toward the tower, confirming Salim’s suspicions. Hands on sword hilts, the two humans followed.
They were no more than halfway up—a few minutes of walking—when the first of the tremors hit. It began low, a buzzing in their teeth and bones that was barely perceptible, then suddenly spiked in intensity, becoming a rapid vibration that shook the earth beneath their feet and sent both Salim and Neila reeling. After a second, Salim went down to one knee, putting a hand on the ground to steady himself, which worked well enough. Windmilling her arms like a tightrope walker about to be out of a job, Neila miraculously managed to keep her feet. The shaking went on for almost a full minute, then subsided as quickly as it came. From the forest rose a raucous cry as a host of winged creatures, red and green and topaz, burst from the canopy and swung left away from the sea, their noises quickly fading. After a moment in which both humans held their breath, waiting to see if the shaking was truly finished, Neila spoke.
“What was that? Earthquake?”
“Not quite,” Salim said. “Look.” He pointed out along the line of the sea cliffs, and she followed his gaze.
Far off in that direction, the sky had changed from pastel blue to a bright pink, like newborn flesh scrubbed raw. Yet that wasn’t the disconcerting part. The real issue was the enormous chunk of cliff face, wide enough to contai
n both golden field and a few trees from the forest, which had broken loose in the shaking. Instead of falling into the sea, it was now rising, a hundred feet of solid rock sheared from its moorings and floating ponderously into the glowing air.
“Oh,” Neila said.
“That’s the Maelstrom for you,” Salim observed.
“Come.” Calabast began striding up the hill once more. “Time grows short.”
The tremors hit again as they climbed, and then again, with increasing frequency. Now, however, Salim and Neila were prepared and managed to keep their balance, adopting a bandy-legged walk like sailors on the rolling deck of a ship. Calabast, for his part, seemed to have little trouble keeping his balance, no doubt due to the sheer weight of his stone and adamantine bulk.
With each shaking of the ground, new pieces of the horizon broke away, floating up into the sky or pulling apart messily like a poorly cut pie. Out of the corner of his eye, Salim saw a crack open up where the sea cliff met the waves, spreading to reveal more of that sickly pink sky beneath. Immediately the ocean around it boiled, becoming an immense whirlpool that swirled violently as it drained, the sea losing its normal waves and tearing rocks from the cliff face in its uncontrollable desire to join the water flowing in a great cataract down into the pink nothing.
Panting and stumbling, occasionally going down on all fours on the steeper slopes, the humans came at last to the tower. Up close, it was easily sixty feet high, the great gray stones covered in places by patches of moss and runners of deep green ivy that branched as it climbed. If there had been any door or gate, it had long since rotted or rusted into oblivion, and now the arch only gaped to reveal the half-light within, like a mouth in which all of the teeth have been broken. Without pausing, Calabast continued inside. Glancing once at each other—it seemed they shared the same misgivings—Salim and Neila followed.
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